Ras Labs has created a unique synthetic material that mimics human muscles under an electric current, which could lead to a new generation of comfortable prosthesis solutions...and lifelike skin for robots.

"Luke Skywalker's prosthetic arm in Star Wars is somewhat the ultimate goal of prosthetics," Ras Labs CEO Eric Sandberg said to TechCrunch. "It provides that lifelike motion, control, and dexterity."

The material, dubbed as Syntethic Muscle, expands and contracts just like living muscle tissue under an electric current. The "electroactive" substance can directly convert energy into motion with a highly adaptable form factor; it can be hard and firm when it needs to be, or soft to conform to various curves and shapes of body parts. While Ras Labs wants to first revolutionize prosthetic limbs, the material has infinite potential: it could even be used to give lifelike flesh to robots and pave the way for synthetic androids straight out of the Alien canon.

Leaked slides show that Dell will release its own 2-in-1 tablet called the XPS 12 while simultaneously pushing Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 into the enterprise sector.

The XPS 12 is very much like the Surface Pro 3 in terms of form and functionality, but Dell's new convertible tablet is has a decidedly beefier 12-inch 3840x2160 4K infinity edge-to-edge touch display that supports Dell's Active Stylus. The XPS 12 sports a 10-hour battery, a Thunderbolt 3 port, a back-facing 8MP camera complemented by a 5MP front-facing camera, and the tablet runs Windows 10.

Dell's 4K tablet also comes with a magnetic keyboard dock that features illuminated keys for extra accenting and precision typing. The leaks haven't revealed any further specifications on the XPS 12 like processing power, RAM or memory.

"The Xbox One is literally a Windows device," says Microsoft's Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela, illustrating how Microsoft doesn't see a distinction between the Xbox One and other platforms like Windows-powered phones and PCs.

"A core power metric for us is Windows 10 devices. That's not PC statement.That will be phones, that will be tablets, that will be laptops, that will be desktops, that will be big surface hubs that will be Xboxes," Capossela said at this year's Citi Global Technology Conference. "Xboxes today run Windows and so every time we sell an Xbox we're actually creating a Windows active device that hopefully people love it; it's a gaming device in their living room. It is not a separate animal. It is literally a Windows device."

While the Redmond-based tech giant has a role for every Windows 10 device, the OS acts as a glue to connect and cement each platform to a unified scope. The seeds of Windows 10 kernal will be planted into the Xbox One in November as part of the console's major new update, opening up new functionality like extensive backward compatibility with Xbox 360 games, Cortana support, and up to "thousands" of Windows 10 apps in the future.

Indie devs already have it pretty hard, and getting the attention of the gaming community can be even harder. Some devs turn to YouTubers as a natural way to advertise their games...but when you're asked to pay $22,000 for a single sponsored video, it makes your jaw drop.

"On one of my normal PR rounds I received an email from a very popular YouTuber with a few million subscribers offering to have one of our games featured on their YouTube channel for a rate of either $17,600 for 2-3 talking points or $22,000 for 2-3 talking points AND a description link," Ben Tester, whose indie studio Wales Interactive is responsible for games like Soul Axiom and Master Reboot, said on Reddit.

This kind of huge payoff isn't anything new. YouTubers have done promos and sponsored videos all over the place, earning up to $15,000 to $30,000 for a single video. This kind of cash is enough to fund an indie game and it's as much as some people make in a year. It got to the point where advertisements and original content bled so closely together that no one could tell what content was promoted. Eventually the Federal Trade Commission had to step in and force regulations on YouTube's multi-million dollar system, ruling that YouTubers now have to make promoted videos explicitly clear to viewers.

With Yellow Cabs being combatant against the rise of Uber and other similar applications, a lawsuit was launched to have this method of transportation banned from use. However, Queens Supreme Court Justice Allan Weiss recently ruled that for-hire vehicles requested through an electronic medium may continue operate alongside Yellow Cabs - effectively ensuring Uber is safe to live another day.

Addressing the case at hand, the judge wrote that "any expectation that the medallion would function as a shield against the rapid technological advances of the modern world would not have been reasonable," adding "in this day and age, even with public utilities, investors must always be wary of new forms of competition arising from technological development."

The lawsuit was filed by four Queens credit unions who each have stakes in Taxi medallions. Their lawyer, Todd Higgins, told media that this ruling is "a stunning abdication of leadership and responsibility that will haunt New York City for years to come," adding "a catastrophe is unfolding, as an entire industry continues to be illegally destroyed, while elected officials allow it to happen on their watch."

Yep, this isn't a joke. Devolver Digital's Dropsy the Clown hit Steam not to long ago, allowing users to become a heavily misunderstood love-filled clown in this "non-traditional take on the classic point and click adventure formula."

Complete with a sing-along trailer (seen above), this title can be played in an open world adventure, puzzles and hugs or text free experience mode. Seeing each option set on a similar path, Dropsy's goal is to turn this community around through the power of pixelated love.

Including the ability to talk to animals, Dropsy will "help those in need, hug total strangers, and unravel dark and shameful secrets from his past on the way to redemption" as stated in a recent press release.

The rumors of Microsoft acquiring AMD are back again, with Microsoft reportedly interested in acquiring both the CPU and GPU divisions, days after AMD announced it was breaking its GPU division away into its own entity called Radeon Technology Group.

With AMD under its wing, Microsoft could truly begin to compete on a totally different level against companies like NVIDIA, Samsung and Apple. With Microsoft's big pockets, AMD could have a massive injection of R&D money and in a few years, we could be looking at a market with one of the strongest competitors being Microsoft.

This is without considering the console side of things, where Microsoft could have AMD exclusively making GPUs, CPUs or APUs for use in its next-generation Xbox consoles. The next step would be VR gaming, and with AMD cooking up Liquid VR we could see Microsoft having a huge win on its hand on the hardware side of things when it comes to VR thanks to it acquiring AMD.

Android Pay, an Apple Pay rival, has now been pushed live to over one million US locations. Utilizing NFC technology in order to transfer funds from your account to a merchant, Android Pay can be used by any NFC-ready device running KitKat 4.4 or higher.

Estimated by IDC to be worth $1 trillion by 2017, analysts believe that mobile payments are the payment option of the future. With companies such as GameStop, Macy's and Staples picking up this form of payment, we may very well see this become mainstream in the near future.

Google has further confirmed that Android Pay will be rolled out to more locations in coming days, with updates following in the near future. Supporting credit and debit cards such as American Express, MasterCard, Visa and more, Apple and Android pay is all about ease of use and accessibility.

If you're looking for something tiny yet mighty, ASUS' Republic of Gamers (ROG) division has just released a beastly compact desktop, naming it the G20CB. This "Mayan-inspired" small form factor system features 8 million color LED options for the exterior plus ASUS ROG's own Aegis II app in order to help you control everything within.

With plenty of different component choices available depending on your budget, ASUS ROG allows users to spec their mini-machine up to an Intel Skylake i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 video card, 32GB of dual-channel DDR4 RAM at 2133 MHz and a 256GB SATA 6Gbit/s SSD.

Complete with Microsoft Windows 10, ASUS' poster-child small form factor system received a CES 2015 Best Innnovation Award, a 2015 iF design award plus the 2015 Taiwan Excellence Gold Award. Designed to support up to three HD displays through the power the the GTX 980, this 9.5-liter desktop doesn't currently have a price tag attached.

The Xbox One's new November update is pretty significant and isn't just about a faster UI. A huge library of backward compatible Xbox 360 games will be supported, and every single one of them will have the full range of functions afforded to Xbox One games.

Backward compatibility is one of the most-requested features in the current generation of consoles, and Microsoft has one-upped Sony by adding the feature to Xbox One consoles. Come November, all Xbox One owners will be able to play 100 different Xbox 360 games on their consoles, with "hundreds more" coming in the months ahead.

Rather than just adding the feature and calling it quits, Microsoft has gone lengths to make the transition from curent-gen to last-gen as smooth as possible. Users will be able to upload their saved Xbox 360 game data to the cloud and download it to the Xbox One to pick up where they left off. But the most impressive feature is that all 100 backward-compatible games will be treated just like Xbox One games with integrated DVR recording and customization via Upload Studio, screenshot snapping and sharing, and cross-platform streaming to Windows 10 PCs.